Sixth Party System

The Sixth Party System, also known as the Reagan Era, was a period of American politics which began in 1972 and ended in 2016. The era was marked by the United States' abandonment of government intervention in the economy and both the Republican and Democratic parties' embracing of laissez-faire capitalism. The era continued until 2016, when the 2016 presidential election led to a rise in populism on both sides and a collapse of the establishment formed under Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

The era began in 1972, when Republican Richard Nixon won re-election in a landslide as the result of conservative backlash against the Civil Rights movement and the counterculture movement. Nixon was forced to resign in 1974 as the result of the Watergate scandal, which, along with the Vietnam War, destroyed the American public's limitless trust for the federal government. While the scandal immediately led to the Democrats regaining control of the US Congress and winning the presidency in 1976 under Jimmy Carter, it ironically strengthened the Republican Party, which was now both opposed to blind faith in the government and the new progressive causes of the right to choose, drug decriminalization, feminism, civil rights, gay rights, and environmentalism. Carter's presidency was marked by "stagflation" and an oil crisis caused by the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and the US economy plummeted due to deindustrialization. In 1980, Republican presidential nominee Ronald Reagan ran against Carter, who sought a second term, and Reagan campaigned on supply-side economic policies, increased defense spending, and a balanced budget. Reagan took advantage of nationwide dissatisfaction with Carter's presidency and won in an Electoral College landslide, and he touted a strong economic recovery from stagflation due to his "trickle-down economics" strategy. He also oversaw a revival of national confidence and prestige through his warm personality, and, in a shocking trend, America's youth rebelled against their counterculture-era parents by supporting Reagan's presidency. Reagan united conservatives, blue-collar white Catholic "Reagan Democrats", and Southern Democrats behind his presidency, and, while he deregulated the national economy, he oversaw the USA's engagement in proxy wars against the USSR in Central America, South America, Grenada, and elsewhere, funding right-wing dictatorships and democratic allies during their wars against Soviet-backed communist regimes or rebel groups. Reagan was embroiled in controversy in the 1983 Iran-Contra scandal, but he handily won re-election in 1984, again doing so in a landslide against Carter's former vice-president Walter Mondale. Reagan appointed conservative justices to the US Supreme Court, opposed abortion, and supported deregulation, but he supported gun control efforts and made modest attempts at backing civil rights. While his administration failed to prevent the United States from falling into recessions and a cocaine and HIV/AIDS epidemic during the late 1980s, Reagan was more successful in foreign policy, establishing a friendly relationship with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and persuading him to withdraw Soviet Army troops from Eastern Europe and Afghanistan and to tear down the Berlin Wall, which he did a year after he left office. In 1988, however, his vice-president George H.W. Bush won the presidency with 426 electoral votes to Democrat Michael Dukakis' 111, the first time since 1948 that a party had held the presidency three consecutive times. Bush promised "no new taxes", and he oversaw the end of the Cold War as the Dissolution of the Soviet Union led to the United States being the world's only superpower on 25 December 1991. Bush became popular due to his victory in the Gulf War, during which the United States and a coalition of UN nations defeated Iraq in a two-week war to defend oil-rich Kuwait from Iraqi invasion, but he betrayed his promise to not raise taxes, as the country again faced a recession and a crime wave associated with the crack epidemic.

In 1992, the centrist Democrat Bill Clinton of Arkansas ran against President Bush, focusing on the economy; Bush's foreign policy successes were irrelevant now that the Cold War was over. Bill Clinton won the election with 370 electoral votes to Bush's 168, and the Democratic Party returned to power after 12 years of Republican rule. Clinton's presidency saw a realignment in the Democratic Party, which had begun to move towards the center-right under Carter and which now abandoned its New Deal policies in favor of economic liberalism and deregulation. Clinton was one of the "New Democrats" who was socially liberal but fiscally conservative, allowing for the Democrats to have electability. Clinton entered the US into the NAFTA trade agreement with Canada and Mexico in 1993, but his healthcare plan was shot down in 1994. That same year, in another realigning moment, the Republican Party won a majority in Congress in the "Republican Revolution", which marked the final demise of the Democratic "Solid South". Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich became House Majority Leader and blocked many of Clinton's proposed laws, but Clinton won re-election in 1996, defeating Republican Bob Dole, and he passed welfare reform and financial deregulation measures. He also continued the United States' role as "global policeman" during the Bosnian War and Kosovo War, fighting alongside NATO to protect Balkan Muslims from ethnic cleansing at the hands of the Serbs. In 1998, Clinton was impeached after lying to Congress about an extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky, but he was acquitted by the US Senate in 1999 and allowed to finish his term, which ended in 2001.

In 2000, in a highly controversial election, Republican George W. Bush defeated Clinton's vice-president Al Gore to become President, losing the popular vote but winning the electoral vote after the US Congress decided against a recount in Florida and confirmed Bush's victory. On 11 September 2001, the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda carried out the 9/11 attacks against the United States, killing 2,993 people in retribution for the US alliance with Israel and its military presence in the Middle East. In retaliation, Bush initiated the Afghanistan War to destroy al-Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan and overthrow its Taliban allies. In 2003, after it was rumored that Ba'athist Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction and was also supportive of al-Qaeda, Bush initiated the Iraq War, overthrowing and executing Saddam Hussein and establishing a Shi'ite-led government. The two wars, together known as the "War on Terror", became America's longest-running wars as they quickly transformed into Islamist insurgencies. Bush won re-election in 2004, but he became unpopular due to the inability to prove that Iraq possessed WMDs and due to the mounting losses in both wars. In 2007, the Great Recession struck the United States, causing a worldwide economic recession which led to the housing markets and Wall Street crashing.

The next year, centrist Democrat Barack Obama, the first African-American presidential nominee for either party, was elected President in a moment of celebration for African-Americans, other racial minorities, and liberals across the country, defeating the Republican John McCain. Obama immediately took action against the Recession by signing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform to increase consumer protection, an economic stimulus package from 2009 to 2010, taxpayer relief acts, a repeal of the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy in the military, and Obamacare. He also withdrew US troops from Iraq in 2011 and from Afghanistan in 2014, leaving only advisors behind. He also reduced the USA and Russia's nuclear stockpiles with START, ordered the assassinations of al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, and backed a successful revolution against dictator Muammar Gaddafi in the Libyan Civil War. In 2012, Obama won re-election after defeating Republican Mitt Romney, and he oversaw the legalization of same-sex marriage, advocated for gun control in response to the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, supported climate change and immigration reform, ordered military intervention in Iraq in 2014 in response to the rise of the Islamic State, funded Syrian Opposition groups during the Syrian Civil War, sanctioned Russia in response to the Crimean Crisis and the Donbass War, brokered a nuclear deal with Iran, and normalized relations with Cuba. America's reputation abroad improved under Obama, and American liberalism was on the rise once again as gay rights, women's rights, internationalism, environmentalism, gun control, and multiculturalism stridently advanced.

The Sixth Party System collapsed in 2016 as the result of a conservative backlash against the progressive tide which occurred under Obama from 2008 to 2016. The first signs of collapse appeared in 2012 when the right-wing populist Tea Party movement emerged in opposition to Obama's economic and foreign policies, advocating for complete economic deregulation, an aggressive foreign policy, and increased religious moralism. In 2016, the Republican Party nominated the controversial far-right businessman Donald Trump for President after a heated primary contest during which Trump made racist remarks against undocumented Mexican immigrants, calling them "rapists" and "murderers"; he also employed anti-Islamic and misogynistic rhetoric. Nevertheless, he gained wide support as an avowed anti-establishment candidate who promised to "Make America Great Again", to "Build a Wall" along the US-Mexico border, to "Drain the Swamp" and destroy the Washington DC political establishment, to take on the liberal-dominated media which he referred to as "fake news", and, with regard to his equally-controversial Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton, to "lock her up" for her alleged corruption. The Democratic Party experienced an equally heated primary in which progressive hero Bernie Sanders was defeated by Clinton with the help of the Democratic National Committee, alienating many young voters. In the general election, WikiLeaks and the Russian Internet Research Agency sabotaged the Clinton campaign with leaks and hacks, and Trump capitalized off of Clinton's unpopularity and her generalization of his supporters as "a basket of deplorables" to stir up anti-establishment hate. In a controversial upset election, he won the 2016 presidential election in the Electoral College but not among the people. His election shattered the Sixth Party System and brought about a new age of heightened political polarization, the "Seventh Party System".

The major parties of the system were:


 * Liberal dot 2.png The Democratic Party was a liberal political party which was founded in 1828 by Andrew Jackson. The party, once overwhelmingly conservative, had shifted towards liberalism under Woodrow Wilson and had become a liberal party under Franklin D. Roosevelt, although it had a strong conservative Southern Democrat wing which was influential until its demise during the 1990s. The Democrats shifted to the right during the Sixth Party System, abandoning New Deal interventionism in favor of centrist "Third Way" economics, supporting social liberalism and fiscal conservatism. From 1972 to 1976 and from 1980 to 1992, they were kept out of power, but they returned with a new face under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
 * Liberal dot 2.png The New Democrats were a centrist faction of the Democratic Party who emerged during the 1980s in response to the decline of New Deal liberal economic policies. The New Democrats supported fiscal conservatism and social liberalism, believing in a free market economy which was accompanied by cultural progressivism. The rebranding of the Democratic Party as a centrist party under Michael Dukakis and Bill Clinton ultimately led to its resurgence during the 1990s and 2000s, but the New Democrats fell out of favor among the party's younger, more progressive voters during the 2010s. The New Democrats mostly appealed to middle-class Americans, especially in the suburbs, and to fiscally conservative, yet socially liberal, upper-class Americans.
 * [[file:Liberal dot 2.png|15px]] The Boll Weevil Democrats were a conservative faction of the Democratic Party which emerged during the 1980s. The Boll Weevils were an overwhelmingly Southern faction of the Democratic Party who supported Ronald Reagan's economic and foreign policies, and they often voted in line with their Republican counterparts. During the 1990s, many of them either retired, joined the Blue Dog Coalition, or became Republicans.
 * Liberal dot 2.png The Blue Dog Democrats were a centrist coalition of Democrats formed in 1995 to represent the declining conservative faction of the party. During the 1990s, many of the Blue Dog Democrats were Southern conservatives who were formerly affiliated with the Boll Weevils and had survived the 1994 Republican Revolution. In the years that followed, most of their southern members either retired, lost re-election, or became Republicans, and, by the 2010s, most Blue Dog Democrats were suburban centrists.
 * Progressive dot.png The Progressive Democrats were a progressive faction of the Democratic Party. The Progressives had been a major faction of the party since the 1900s, and they reached their nadir during the 1980s, despite Jesse Jackson's attempts to build a "Rainbow Coalition". They had a resurgence during the 2000s, especially during and after Barack Obama's presidency, and they supported Obama's social policies while criticizing his Wall Street bailouts and his neoliberal economics. The Progressives had their bases in urban centers, among Hispanics, African-Americans, Muslims, Jews, and other racial and ethnic minorities, and among young voters.


 * Big tent dot.png The Republican Party was a conservative political party which was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists. The Republican Party was once predominantly a classical liberal party, but it had decidedly adopted pro-business conservative views during the 1910s and became increasingly conservative as the libertarian Rockefeller Republicans retired or defected to the Democrats during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Ronald Reagan's presidency shaped the Republican Party's views from then until the 2010s, as the party universally supported deregulation, a balanced budget, and, generally, social conservatism.
 * ​​​​​​​Big tent dot.png The Establishment Republicans were the main faction of the Republican Party which emerged during the Reagan era. As the Republican Party became less divided due to general Republican support for Reagan's economic and social policies, the New Right Republicans morphed into the mainstream "establishment" Republicans who were in power under President George W. Bush. The Establishment Republicans supported free trade, economic liberalism, fiscal conservatism, social conservatism (opposing abortion, drug decriminalization, gay rights, gun control, etc.), limited immigration (opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants and prioritizing the immigration of skilled workers), and support for high defense spending.
 * Populist dot.png The Tea Party movement was a right-wing populist and libertarian faction of the Republican Party which emerged in 2012 as a conservative backlash against Barack Obama's raising of the debt ceiling and his Wall Street bailout. The Tea Party movement advocated for lower taxes, a reduction of the national debt, decreased government spending, opposition to universal healthcare, limited government, and constitutional originalism. The Tea Party was organized at the grassroots level and helped to propel Donald Trump into the presidency in 2016.
 * ​​​​​​​Traditionalist dot.png The Religious Right Republicans were a social conservative faction of the Republican Party which emerged during the 1980s as the result of the growth of evangelicalism in the United States. Led by Jerry Falwell and his associates, the Christian right was an alliance of evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics who were united in their opposition to abortion, gay rights, feminism, Islam, secularism, and the non-traditional family. The rise of the Christian right was one of the main factors which led to the fall of the Democrats' "Solid South" during the 1980s and the rise of the Republicans, who embraced Judeo-Christian morals as one of their party planks and supported social conservatism. The Religious Right was strongest in the Bible Belt of the American South and among suburban white Catholics across the country.